Cry of Despair
by Lysana
Summary: After all the pain she's felt and seen, Kiukiu can't get one echoing sound of agony out of her mind. What does it matter if Prince Nagar, once the angel Nagazdiel, was the worst terror of her world? She is a Spirit Singer, and he is a soul in torment.


Author's Note: This fanfic takes place about five to ten years after the end of the "Tears of Artamon" trilogy.

* * *

Kiukiu woke suddenly, sitting up in bed with her eyes wide and staring. Her heart raced, and she fought to calm herself.

Next to the young Spirit Singer, her dear husband Gavril and their two-year-old daughter Vayanna were still sleeping peacefully. She smiled, remembering how frightened she had been when the snake-goddess Anagini had said that she would claim Kiukiu's firstborn for herself in return for the service she had done the girl. But Anagini had not turned out to be cruel. She had only wanted a priestess, she said when Vayanna was born, and she did not insist on separating the child from her family. They had built a small house near Anagini's Jade Springs, and spent much of their time there when they were not living at Gavril's palace.

Without warning, the horror of Kiukiu's dream rushed over her again. She shivered, lying back down and staring through the comfortable darkness at the barely-visible beams of the ceiling. Once again, she heard the terrified, hopeless cry of the evil Prince Nagar from when she had helped to seal him into the Realm of Shadows.

The memory of the pain in that sound wrenched at her soul. _I'm a Guslyar, I'm supposed to help lost spirits __escape__ from the shadows!_ Ever since that day, she had kept hearing the terrible cry in her dreams. It didn't happen often, but over the years it had never entirely stopped.

Kiukiu felt a few tears starting to trickle out of the corners of her eyes. _It isn't fair,_ she thought. _Even for the most evil being who was ever in this world... But that's not true!_ she thought suddenly. _Gavril's friend Khezef told him how the Drakhaouls were enslaved long ago. He lied about some things, but Gavril always said he's sure his Drakhaoul wasn't lying about that. They started out as angels! Whoever enslaved them must have been the true force of evil._

And Kiukiu herself had spoken to Nagazdiel - she suddenly realized that she had thought of him by his old angelic name, though as the daemon of her world's legends he had long been called Nagar - when she met him on the sacrificed children's recreated tropical island in the Realm of Shadows. She had asked him about himself, about the old goodness of his spirit and whether he really wanted to do evil now, and he had not given her a straight answer. Instead, he had tried to impress her with how frightening he was.

Kiukiu had always felt that what he really meant by that was, _I don't __have__ a straight answer. Especially not for myself._

"So what can I do?" she wondered aloud. Beside her, Gavril stirred and murmured questioningly in his sleep. She smiled and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, shaking her head even though her husband's eyes were closed in sleep and he couldn't see her. "Never mind, dear one," she said quietly. Gavril nodded in curt, decisive satisfaction, even though he was still sound asleep, and snuggled back down into the blankets with Vayanna.

Kiukiu looked over at them fondly. _Dear Gavril,_ she thought, _this is __my__ task. You needn't worry._

Closing her eyes, but nowhere near being sleepy, Kiukiu pondered. She couldn't leave her family, but she knew that this wasn't just an ordinary task that a Guslyar could undertake and then return from. And she knew now that she could not possibly leave the fallen angel Nagazdiel in agony forever.

_And what about his people?_ Khezef and the other Drakhaouls loved their prince deeply, she knew. How could they be completely happy when _they_ had been freed to go home, and healed, but _he_ was still trapped in lonely shadows and in his own evil?

There was only one answer. _I will live out my own life,_ Kiukiu suddenly vowed with absolute, fierce sincerity, _and then I will go and rescue Nagazdiel from his prison._ She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling again, her lips pressed firmly together in determination. _And if I cannot save him - I will stay for eternity with him in the Realm of Shadows, so that he will not have to be alone._

_Hold on,_ Kiukiu silently told a spirit who could not possibly hear her. It must be terrible for him, she knew: he would be slowly losing whatever remained of his memories, piece after piece of everything that made him who he was. And he would have to be desperately lonely.

_No matter what you've done, you don't deserve this kind of suffering. Please don't give up! I will come for you._

* * *

Author's Note: This is a prequel to my fanfic "One More Angel." Please read it!

I've suddenly started thinking about Sarah Ash's "Tears of Artamon" trilogy a lot lately, and I just suddenly wrote this fanfic without expecting to. I'm also starting to work on a longer fanfic for the same book trilogy. The title will be "Thrown Down From Heaven" and it will basically tell the whole story of the Drakhaouls from before they were enslaved to the end of the canon books.

All my "Tears of Artamon" fanfics are what I've always thought in my own interpretations of the canon story. I just never knew that I would actually write these stories and tell them! Aside from "One More Angel," of course, which I believe I wrote within hours after I finished reading the trilogy.


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